Moi Avenue blast victim dies

May 31, 2012 8:31 am

By Robin Njogu, Prime Minister Raila Odinga visited the blast victims at the KNH on Tuesday. The government pledged to foot the hospital bills uncured by all blast victimsNAIROBI, Kenya, May 31 – One person has died from injuries sustained four days ago when a home-made bomb ripped through shops in central Nairobi, in what the government has now admitted was a terrorist attack.

The woman who had severe burns died on Thursday morning at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH).

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“Unfortunately, one of the patients receiving care at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with 90 percent burns succumbed this morning at 6.45am. May God rest her soul in eternal peace,” said a brief statement from KNH acting Corporate Communications Manager Kibet Mengich.

The blast on Monday ripped through a complex of small stores at Assanand’s House on Nairobi’s Moi Avenue, extensively damaging the building and smashing windows across the street. At least 38 people were wounded.

Twenty eight of those injured were taken to KNH where 23 were treated and discharged. Three of them were students from the adjacent Mount Kenya University. The other victims were taken to various city hospitals.

“Following the blast that occurred at Assanand’s House on Moi Avenue on Monday 28th May 2012, KNH received a total of 28 casualties. KNH is now left attending to one patient admitted in the ICU with 50 percent burns and two others in the general wards,” Mengich said.

Police on Tuesday evening said that they were looking for two suspects believed to have been involved in the attack.

Police Spokesman Eric Kiraithe said they were compiling data on the suspects which will be released to the public soon.

“We have been given a clear description of the two suspects and are now piecing together the information. These are the two people who were involved in the attack,” Kiraithe said of the men, one of them said to have left a bag in a shop in the building before the explosion went off.

Kenya has suffered a series of attacks in the past several months, which the police have blamed on Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab insurgents or its supporters.

Attackers lobbed a grenade through a cafe window in a town near Kenya’s border with Somalia on Wednesday, killing one person and wounding four, a police official said.

“One person has been killed and four have sustained injuries,” said a police officer who declined to give his name.

“They were watching a video when a grenade was thrown into the cafe in the town of Wajir,” he added.

Two separate grenade attacks on Saturday wounded at least eight people in northeastern Kenya, the restive region bordering war-torn Somalia.

And earlier this month, attackers launched a deadly grenade assault on a restaurant in the port city of Mombasa.

The hardline Al-Shabaab has warned Kenya of revenge attacks for having sent tanks and troops into Somalia in October.

Robin Njogu Robin is the News Editor at Capital Group and has been practicing Journalism for over a decade. He holds a degree in Development Communication from the University of Nairobi and a Diploma in Mass Communication from the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication.